Join the Army, See the World

More American boys are now seeing the world than have traveled with all the fellowships, student groups and Cook's tours since World War I. News items and letters from a score of foreign fronts are beginning to tell the story of this worldwide experiment in wartime internationalism. Some of the doughboys like it, others are homesick. Some of their doings are amusing, some rude, some healthy, some sentimental. All are educational, promising a better understanding of the world and its people than the U.S. has ever had before.

Getting Along. Both the doughboys and their hosts were trying hard to get along. In England Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden told them, "We'll even learn baseball if you give us time." Doughboys in southern England pitched in and helped harvest rye, wheat and barley. The British conceded, sometimes disappointedly, that they were not so wild & wooly as expected. Instead, they were willing to indulge in a cup of tea.

Down the hump, in Brazilian towns they learned to be careful about approaching Brazilian women, whose men are touchy. They were puzzled by the bidets in hotel bathrooms. Opposite the hump at Leopoldville, Belgian Congo, the doughboys impressed the natives with the "magnificence" of their equipment, and immediately set to work building a big camp named for President Roosevelt. Up the air transport route, in Egypt, they learned to watch for bulges in the costumes of native "wog" workers; sometimes found parts of vehicles. But fezzed natives were learning to fry a hamburger, and Yanks were furnishing the instructions.

Men without women were lonely. Lounging on Far Fan Beach in Panama, an Indiana soldier explained, "Oh, I guess it's all right, but girls are mighty scarce--especially American girls." Trinidad's isolated doughboys resorted to such classified ads as "Wanted to Trade: one blonde, fully equipped with hot and cold running water, new automatic gear shift, overstuffed upholstery in a delicate pink, supercharged, and ready for action. Does not even need reconditioning. Will trade for Book on How to Have Fun in the Barracks, or Life Without Women. Request immediate transaction before losing mind." So many men carried on with the Negro population that British residents remarked philosophically that the native race would be improved.

Food Was Good. In Britain Lieut. Harold Ravson of East Orange, NJ. was commended for good baking. His bakery battalion turns out tasty, greyish-brown springy bread for soldiers. Doughnuts were harder to get because of restrictions on dried milk and cooking fats. Doughboys had to learn to like English and Scottish scones (biscuits) and oatcakes. With all the change of foods and living conditions, Americans in Britain were in good health. Chief U.S. Army Surgeon Colonel Paul Hawley said there had been only six deaths from diseases. But there were 48 from injuries on crooked English roads, where the left-side driving sometimes caught soldiers napping.

In Trinidad soldiers ate plenty of American beef and pork chops shipped especially for them, while the native population often couldn't buy beef for days on end. Doughboys bought coffee and sandwiches from three American girls running a shop at the Guatemala City airport, gobbled guayaba ice cream in San Jose's (Costa Rica) Palace Drug Store, paid a dime for Coca-Cola on Panama's Far Fan Beach. In Iceland they waited for the arrival of the country's first soda fountain ordered by Kristjan G. Gislason & Co. In the Egyptian desert they were irked when they had to pay 22-c- per pack for "Smokes For Yanks."

Everywhere doughboys are learning the ancient art of haggling. At first they were unaware that natives of many nations quadrupled their prices, expecting to be bargained down. In some places where U.S. money buys a lot, soldiers flabbergasted hawkers of ivory, ebony and leather gimcracks by outright purchases at the blown-up prices. Occasionally they caused a flurry of local inflation with such free-flowing money.

Soldiers' letters plagued the censors, who considered themselves lonely, abused, misunderstood. Some soldiers cut gaps in their own letters noting, "Ha, ha, beat censor to it." Others pleaded with notations, "Please pass this, it won't hurt anything." Some jovially began their letters, "Dear Snooky and Censor." Censors reported love letters were chaste, some with old, elaborate finishing touches, "Oceans of love and a kiss on every wave."

Down under in New Guinea, Australian and U.S. soldiers retrieved auxiliary gas tanks jettisoned by the Japs to get leftover gas for their cigaret lighters, wore gay bird-of-paradise feathers valued at $100 in their hats. In Australia they revived the snipe hunt, victimizing a U.S. officer, and taught local restaurateurs to cut and cook T-bone steaks.

On the Ecuadorian coast U.S. boys suntanned at swank Salinas Beach, while in British Guiana their only recreation was boating at the exotic, savanna-bordered Demerara River to Georgetown, "And that ain't much."

They listened to Harry Lauder in Glasgow, taught the Highland Light Infantry Band to play Maw, I Miss Your Apple Pie, learned the Highland fling. On leaves in England they cycled and hiked to view old country sights. Flying back from Africa, they loaded on monkeys for ballast. In Surinam they sat around the Chinese store, munching cheese and crackers.

As millions of long-isolated doughboys stream abroad, a new kind of international relations--besides that of Government officials and Embassy receptions--is in the making. In the future, conversation around the U.S. cracker barrel and thinking in U.S. heads will be conditioned by a knowledge of peoples in far corners of the world, which the U.S., with all its yearning for world peace, has never known before.

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